The Death of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa Brings New Immigration Debate

The small town of Iowa has been swarmed for weeks as the police looked for missing Mollie Tibbetts

BOOKLYN, Iowa – Last month, Mollie Tibbetts – college student – went for a jog and never got back home. Since then, television cameras swarmed the town in Iowa farm country while police officers continued to look for her.

After hundreds of tips, interviews, countless prayers and even donations to a reward fund, investigators came into something tragic. A body believed to be Ms. Tibbetts’ was found buried beneath cornstalks on a farm outside the small town. Authorities charged Cristhian Rivera with first-degree murder in her death. Rivera is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and worked on a farm owned by a Republican family.

As expected, new discussions regarding the flawed immigration system popped out, as President Trump and other conservatives cited the arrest of Mr. Rivera as proof of the flawed immigration system and poor border security that the president has long warned about.

Kim Reynold, Iowa’s Republican governor, released a statement in which she said that she was “angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community.”

“Mollie Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday evening in a Twitter message.

“A person came in from Mexico illegally and killed her. We need the wall, we need our immigration laws changed, we need our border laws changed, we need Republicans to do it because the Democrats aren’t going to do it,” he said.